ZTE to Focus on Smartphones Priced at $100-200 in India

New Delhi: Even as domestic handset makers rush to offer smartphones priced as low as Rs 2,000, Chinese telecom firm ZTE has said it would focus on devices priced between $100 and 200, or Rs 6,000-12,000, for the Indian market.

"Rather than low cost, our focus is on value for money products. We have smartphones starting Rs 5,000, but overall, we would want to focus on $100-200 devices to drive sales for our Indian business," ZTE India CEO Mobile Business Yuan Kang told PTI.

He further said that though the firm is fairly new in the fiercely competitive smartphone market in the country, it is expecting to close the year with $3-4 million in revenues from the division.

"India is a huge market and we are confident that our portfolio will meet Indian requirements. We are building our brand and in the next few months, we will launch 4-5 new handsets online and 3-4 devices offline," he said.

The company is also looking at bringing its 'Nubia' range of premium smartphones to India.

ZTE on Tuesday launched a new handset - V5 - exclusively on marketplace major Snapdeal, priced at Rs 10,999.

The Android KitKat based handset comes with five-inch screen, 1.2 Ghz quad core processor, 13 MP rear and 5MP front camera, 4GB storage (expandable upto 32 GB) and 2,400 mAh battery.

According to research firm IDC, smartphone sales in the country grew almost three-fold to over 44 million in 2013, buoyed by affordable devices made by local firms such as Micromax and Karbonn.

In the second quarter of 2014, 18.42 million smartphones were shipped in India. Though Samsung is the leader with a 29 per cent market share, Micromax (18 per cent), Karbonn (8 per cent) and LAVA (6 per cent) are close competitors.

Last week, Firefox (in partnership with Spice and Intex) had launched two new handsets, priced below Rs 2,300, aimed at those looking to upgrade from feature phones to smartphones. Google is also expected to launch its much-awaited sub-$100 (around Rs 6,000) smartphones in India on September 15, which will further intensify competition in the booming multi-billion dollar smart-devices market here.